


Phélypeaux

by 7isthemagicnumber



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Civil War, Does it count when it's technically not a child, Drama, Marauders' Era, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Politics, Pureblood Culture, Self-Insert, Wizarding Traditions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:57:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7isthemagicnumber/pseuds/7isthemagicnumber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being Peter Pettigrew was nothing like I'd expected, not that I'd expected to be him. But between politics and a civil war looming, being Peter Pettigrew was the least of my problems.<br/>...<br/>That was a lie. Being Peter Pettigrew was the source of all of my problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Peter Pettigrew. _Peter Pettigrew_.

I was _Peter Pettigrew_.

I had no idea what I'd done in my past life to earn this.   
  
I stared at the walls for a long moment, thinking about the many faults of Peter Pettigrew.

No. I didn't care if I threw the whole universe into jeopardy. I wasn't going to act like a spineless worm. I might be Peter in this life, but this life sure as hell wasn't just a book series anymore. Not to me, it wasn't.

I'd come too far in my past life to let something like reincarnation hold me down.

I flexed my chubby three-year-old fingers.

... I hoped I wasn't movie Pettigrew. I really, really hope that I wasn't movie Peter.

May the lord have mercy on me.

 

* * *

 

I'd lived in this strange world for five years now. I learned more about Peter too.   
  
It was horrifying to learn what Peter had to go through as a kid. I couldn't have ever imagined that this was the verbal abuse that he had to suffer through as a kid.

The sheer amount of neglect was despicable. It made my blood boil at the mere thought.

Peter's father, to put it simply, was a bloody, worthless, _arsehole_. He wasn't fit to be a father. No, he wasn't fit to be a _human being_. He didn't _deserve_ to be human.

The only thing I could say was that he didn't hit me.

No. Well.

Once. Just once. And yet, once was too much.

Pettigrew Senior wasn't all there, and Enid, Peter's mother, just took it. She'd just let him yell and yell at her. I wasn't sure if she was just weak-willed, or if she also wasn't right in the head. She didn't speak at all.

I couldn't understand. Enid loved him. But how could loving someone mean being destroyed? 

It was infuriating and surreal and heartbreaking.

She would just look at him like she couldn't understand, like she didn't know how to make it better and that it was all her fault.

I couldn't understand why. How could she love such an abusive man?

I didn't know if he was always like that, but she had no spine at all. She never even talked to me. 

I remember as a toddler, just once, trying to distract him from her, and he'd just _backhanded me into the wall_. I remembered being terrified. I was just a kid. If he turned on me and went at me like he did Enid, I wouldn't survive.

And Enid just watched him do it. Didn't say a single thing.

I think I was lucky that he just turned back to her.

I was so very lucky that I bounced right off the wall. Accidental magic, I think.

He liked to hurt others when he was angry. If he didn't get a reaction, then he'd get even more upset.

But despite that these two were terrible people, weak-willed and petty, people who shouldn't matter at all, it still hurt.

I only had one mother and father here after all.


	2. Social Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If I could have, I would steered clear of any purebloods. I certainly hadn't thought I'd meet any, this early in the game. 
> 
> And yet, here I was.

When I was five, my father started to throw books at me. Not literally, thank Merlin.

But he'd throw books about nobility at me. And he'd say to me, "Read."   
Like he expected me to just know how to read.

At this point, I was concerned that I might absorb the the insanity via proximity.

It was a horrifying thought. I'd been there before, and I'd spent years in therapy, going through countless crying jags and bouts of depression, and crippling self-esteem.

Pettigrew must have needed a lot more therapy than I ever did however.

Oddly, the thought cheered me up tremendously.

I could be so much worse.

Being unable to measure up to his father's expectations was most definitely only the start of it.

This was probably the start of an inferiority complex. Self-esteem issues. Guilt and fear in regards to Enid Pettigrew. There was enough to fill a page and three more.

No wonder he'd been so desperate at Hogwarts. To fit into a group with three other boys who were carefree and confident, who were popular and smart, it must have been a dream.

The death eaters must have been what came crashing down.

I could imagine. Going to Hogwarts, escaping his abusive father, meeting other boys, becoming one of the marauders, cruising along and all the while being fearful and afraid, being crippled by the lack of self-esteem, and alone.

That was what depression did to you. It made you feel like the loneliest person on the planet, even when you were surrounded in a crowd.

(In my more sympathetic moments, I though my father to also be an extraordinarily lonely man.)

What the man had in store for me however, I had no idea.

Reading went on for a year. He'd hand me articles, books, and paperwork, and expect me to read through all of them.

He started taking me to dinners and events.

  
Dozens of them.

To the Potters, the Notts, the Parkinsons, the Malfoys, the upper-crust. I didn't realize that pureblood circles were so interconnected. How did a name like _Pettigrew_ join these circles? I rarely heard other names that weren't upper-crust besides our own.

And then at six, I was handed off to the Malfoys.

The _Malfoys_.

I had no idea how he did it. Pettigrew? The Malfoys were part of the _sacred twenty-eight_.

Why on earth were the Malfoys fostering a _Pettigrew_?

 

* * *

 

Good news. I didn't look like Pettigrew.

I had a strong nose, decent mouth, and fine features.

There were no such things as ugly, powerful wizards. I remembered how Rowling had described wizards like Grindlewald, and Riddle, and Dumbledore. And all the pureblood wizards, the lords with higher standings, the ones with more magical power.

Handsome. Charismatic. Bloodlines.

If you were born powerful, you were born beautiful. There were no exceptions.

And me?

Well actually I had no idea. I didn't have a basis for comparison, let alone the ability to feel magic, which wasn't so clean cut. The books were frustratingly vague on that.

I figured that being reborn gave me enough magic that I'd ended up decent looking, however.

I was just glad that I didn't look like movie Pettigrew. I shuddered.

I'd thought Pettigrew was English, but it sounded like a French name. And the French typically had fine features. My hair was darker than the colour of Pettigrew in the movie.

I supposed the movie wasn't what I should be basing my facts on. Something to figure out in my spare time.

But I couldn't stop staring. It was so strange to look into the mirror and see a completely different person. It was strange that I didn't particularly feel uncomfortable in my body.

I didn't feel like I didn't belong. I was used to this body. The only frustration I had was not being able to reach things. I was a tiny five year old kid. I was smaller than I'd been in my past life.   
  
I knew that Pettigrew was small but this was ridiculous. Would I even grow to 5 ft this time around? Hadn't the book said that I was shorter than Harry Potter?

If all my year mates turned out to be taller than me, I was going to kill someone.


	3. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter's got a lot of regrets. Being best friends with Lucius Malfoy isn't one of them. Say what you will about dark families, but Peter's learned a hard lesson about looking at someone and judging them when he doesn't truly know a damn thing about them. He's not going to forget it. Besides, it's not like he's got much room to talk on that end.

I met Lucius Malfoy, who was six years older than me. He hadn't started Hogwarts yet. Something about his birthday being just a day too late.

And then there was Abraxas Malfoy. The current Head of house.

Abraxas Malfoy was upper-crust. He wasn't like the death eaters or the upstarts. He had power, money, and class. He was a gentleman.

And he was intimidating. I had no shame in admitting that, and that of all the purebloods that I'd met, it was the older generation that made the term pureblood impressive.

That was, however, not to say that Abraxas Malfoy was an admirable man. He was clever and quick-witted as Lords ought to be, charismatic and intelligent.

I had no doubt that he could be deviously charming and generous, but I also had great confidence that he was as cruel as he was generous and sly as he was clever.

Ambitious. Deadly.

What would the reign of Tom Riddle have been like with the help of lords and ladies who wielded their power with such deadly efficiency?

Or would he have fallen twice as quickly to those who would have seen him for exactly what he was? A child with delusions of grandeur, manipulated by the light lord. Sunk into dark arts so black he'd gone mad.

To the purebloods who followed after Abraxas Malfoy's time and his ilk, I abhorred and yet I also pitied.

The death eaters all seemed to have behaved terribly inexcusably for a circle of esteemed lords and ladies who should have been much more than what Tom Riddle reduced them to.

To kill and torture for sport, and not just to people they considered lesser, but people whom they ought to have considered equal.

What did that make them?

And yet, that era had been (or would be?) the era of two lords, dark and light, fighting against each other.

It was no wonder that so many were caught in the cross-fire, and especially where one light lord reigned upon the impressionable young minds of the heirs and the ones with the greatest potential (and the other dark lord cursed to sabotage).

That was what Hogwarts had been built to be, after all. To give those with potential the chance to take flight.

And how could Lord Malfoy raise a child properly with a light lord and a dark lord fighting and manipulating every scene?

How could anyone, for that matter?

I would spend two years being fostered by Lord Malfoy, perpetually confused but greatly educated before I finally understood what was going on. And let me tell you, it was a long two years.

But the oddest thing of those two years? It was that I actually got on well with Lucius. Really well. Weirdly well.

What did that say, that Lucius Malfoy was the type of person I felt comfortable around?

He was smart and clever and his sheer intelligence would have intimidated me if I had really been six. He knew exactly how to get someone capitulate and he was only eleven.

And I think that was the thing. He was eleven and lonely.

(It seemed to be a recurring thing, all these people with power. Who did you turn to as an equal when everyone around you was weaker and lesser? When everyone around you wanted not for who you were?)

And here I was. Six and too young and too clever by far, and much too honest. I confess to taking too much amusement in his confusion.

But here was the thing. He was a smartass. And I'd grown out of that, but that didn't mean that I'd grown out of humour. And as said, I was honest.

I didn't have the patience to dally around the matter at hand. It wasn't that I couldn't.

An education with Shakespeare and old English and a love of poets like Tennyson and Frost and Neruda had taught me the beauty of words.

But if there was something wrong, I wasn't going to waste time beating around the bush.

My thoughts— he appreciated the straight-forwardness of someone who chose to be so, and the confidence. Unusual, yes. Absolutely unafraid of him? Also, yes.

He had no idea what to do with someone who knew his worth as a Malfoy and didn't give a single knut.

Say what you will. Lucius definitely had charisma. But even he wasn't immune to the pitfalls of being an eleven year old child.

And let me tell you, after the initial long winding road, we got along like a house on fire.

I pulled him into all sorts of troubles, and he pulled us back out.

Those two years passed in an almost-idyllic manner. It was more than I had ever expected as a pureblood.

* * *

 

 

A year and a half after Lucius and two months later, I found a French genealogy book.

And what did I find in that French genealogy book? Pettigrew, a name changed by time, a modern derivation of Phélypeaux.

It was so obscure, and only the Malfoys would have a self-updating registry of ancient French pureblood names dating back to the thirteenth century. And perhaps the Blacks, of course.

Why did my father do all the things he had?

The Pettigrews held the title of Marquess.  
This wasn't just a mere title. It wasn't just responsibilities and a way of living.

The wizard had to live up to the title. To be a lord, a wizard had to have power. And with the title came power, and an endless amount of responsibilities.

If you didn't hold up to the title, your line paid the price.

(This was why the Blacks were slowly being swallowed by madness. Too much power, too much arrogance to admit that being pureblood did not just make you better. You had to live up to being pureblood.)

Our name was old. I never would have thought that the Pettigrews descended from old money, but we Pettigrews were a variation of Phélypeaux, a name traceable all the way back to the thirteenth century.

Almost eight centuries of history, and that was only what was on public records. Who knew how long our family history truly was?

Perhaps less than those like the Blacks, who could be traced back to the fifth century, long before the rest, but eight centuries was nothing to scoff at.

We lost the original name and all the power that came with it after too much inbreeding. Arrogance. Lessening power. We couldn't even access main vaults, not that we remembered that they'd existed anymore.

And surprisingly, the current vaults weren't inconsiderable.

I was really, really surprised to see this, considering the state of my parents and the former Peter Pettigrew himself. What I found out slowly cleared my confusion about why the family was the way it was, and why we still held the title.

The Pettigrews had started declining in the past two centuries and a half. At this point, the only reason my family still held the title was that we managed to keep having sons and daughters before the title passed onto the head of the family. In that way, we held the title in reserve, and magic did not judge us before we managed to secure a heir.

And it made mental instability in my family very common. Peter Pettigrew might actually have been lucky in that aspect. He had been a victim, yes, but unless I was mistaken, he had never been less than in control of his mental facilities.

In this passing of heirs, the title judged the head "unworthy" but only stayed dormant for the next heir to reach his or her majority instead of simply becoming lost to the family.

It was by fortune that our family magics involved a lot of "luck" or I don't think we would have managed to keep conceiving a male in time.

After all, no matter how... Strange nobility was, we still had to wait until we were at least 16 before marriage. It had to do with how our magic set and puberty a whole set of other factors. It was still very unwise, as could be seen from my father, who was so unstable, to put mildly.

I figured that Peter's generation was when the Pettigrews lost their title. They had finally hit a point where they didn't have enough... logic to prepare for continuing the line.

I imagined that if I hadn't been who I was, well, original Peter had probably never been fostered by the Malfoys.

I wouldn't complain though. There were much worse things.


	4. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being an heir was a pain, Peter could attest to that much. 
> 
> He remembered all those courtly dramas that involved infighting and interbreeding playing on television. He never watched any, and neither had he ever imagined that it would be his life now.
> 
> This was his life. This was actually his life. Honest to Merlin, he didn't know what he did to deserve this.

Two years before Hogwarts, and fours years in the company of Malfoys, my father died.

The day after my father's death, I was summoned to Gringotts, the goblin bank, and the rapidity was unusual to say the least, never mind the fact that Enid Pettigrew was not even invited.

A more... _generous_ wizard may say that it was due to the fact that Phélypeaux was a dying name, and that the Pettigrews were no longer truly nobility, but that was an unacceptable answer.

A _true_ wizard did not flaunt protocol, nor make excuses.

 _Goblins_ didn't flaunt protocol. It wasn't done. Not because it wouldn't be proper, for what goblin cared for wizarding societal expectations? No, you did not flaunt protocol because protocol was _binding_.

I knew very little about of goblin protocol, but once goblins started consorting with Wizardkind, well, there was no going back.

Whether you were Elven, Giant, Merman, or Centaur, nothing excused you. Race did not excuse you. Why would these things matter to Magic?

Magic did not forgive nor forget.

Formal celebrations like weddings and funerals, as well as Festivals such as Lithasblot, Eostre, and Winternights were seeped in memory and magic.

Once you started worshipping, you did not _stop_ , because worshipping was a branch of magic that sustained itself.

Flaunting simply begged for trouble.

I for one, knew better.

The letter with the official Gringotts logo was heavy in my hands. Nothing was going to be done just looking at it, so I grabbed the key.

I was portkeyed to the bank, and those goblins, they had no idea what they were in for.

I'd give them that they were goddamn sneaky little sons-of-bitches though. But they just weren't expecting someone who had been fostered. And they certainly wouldn't be expecting someone like me, a fully grown, experienced adult in the body of a child.

I raised the key obligingly as soon as I could recover from the transport.

"Peter Pettigrew," a goblin standing guard to my right stated. He gestured to a goblin to my left.

"Gildwing's the Pettigrew account manager. Follow him," he nodded curtly.

  
We wizards have always had such a strange relationship with goblins.

After the first goblin had consorted with a wizard, goblins had been gifted with the magic of crafting, something that they cherished beyond all measure.

Goblins had already been creatures of the earth, with plenty of war magic and complexity, but crafting refined their magics.

I had no idea how, and if you weren't a goblin, or a friend of a goblin, it was very likely that you'd never know.

Most goblins and wizards did not get along, and one of the reasons was attitude. As Luc would say, there was a reason why many purebloods became so arrogant that they believed themselves to be Magic's gift to earth.

I however, was of the opinion that we wizards knew too little of magic to make any sort of assumption about what we may or may not have done for other races, but I digressed.

We crossed a long hallway, and stepped through an embossed, golden door. The tiny, fascinating, carved details in the door caught my attention.

We arrived at a tall desk, and I had to climb onto the seat to see the papers on the desk.

Gildewing settled behind the desk and tapped the paper with a fancy black quill.

"You just need to sign here, here, and here," Gildewing smiled nastily at me.

Trying to scare me? I did not react to his expression.

I imagined that if I had actually been the nine year old that I looked like, they would have gotten away with whatever they were planning.

I only stared at him for a moment, just long enough to make a wizard uncomfortable, and my expression was probably not as mild as I was trying to make it, because there was something about his mien that suggested surprise and just a minute touch of discomfort.

Why would he be apprehensive? Goblins cared for nothing but gold. The only reason for any apprehension was that... he would either be losing gold, or losing the opportunity of gaining more gold.

His clothing wasn't nearly as fancy as his surroundings, and I figured that as a "manager," he was banking on my signing the... I glanced down to see a contract. Banking on my signing a contract for any sort of promotion.

I deliberately moved the ink pot placed near my elbow closer to the center of the table, grabbed the papers and settled into the chair getting comfortable read.

He shifted minutely in his seat, something that I wouldn't have caught if I wasn't looking for it.

I did not smile at his discomfort, for the more I read, the more my mood blackened.

There was a lot of legal jargon of which the long, fancy flowering language boiled down to giving up the title of Marquess and a large portion of the contents of my bank account. Sixty-five percent, to be exact, no higher only because of my lack of lordship. To the goblins and to an unmentioned third party, apparently distantly related to the Pettigrews, for a given definition of distant.

The family bank account wasn't touched. Other minor titles, deeds and lands were left untouched as well. But considering the rest of the contents of the contract, it would have only been a matter of time.

The third party could only be a lesser branch. Probably a lot more clever, considering that they had managed to get the goblins into this plan. Or perhaps they were all banking on the fact that that the Pettigrews were declining?

And it was inappropriate and I oughtn't take amusement in such a situation but the fact that no one outside of my father and the Malfoys had known that I was being fostered was one of extreme amusement.

If they'd even had an inkling, they would not have dared.

I ruminated over the contents of the contract, letting things slide into place in my head.

I slowly looked up at the goblin who was very carefully not vibrating in his seat after at least twenty minutes of silence.

There was something you should know about me.

I had spent a lot of my childhood infuriated at my weak-willed parents, angry and exhausted in equal measure, then to find out that it was a byproduct of the desperation of my ancestors.

I couldn't stop simply resenting them. But there was a new empathy born of understanding. I would not be surprised to find that they had had a similar childhood as my own, and having a child by the time they were sixteen could not have been healthy, for their bodies nor for their minds.

I wasn't so much as good at controlling my temper as I was confident in myself. Fostering only helped with the legal jargon. Technically, fostering should have been about teaching manners and discipline, core beliefs and traditions.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I had blazed through all that. I had the benefit of spending all too much time in the Malfoy's libraries, where the whole history of the Malfoy could be found. And Malfoys redefined the definition of finance and power.

Slowly, I gently smiled at him. It was a smile with just the barest hint of teeth. He did not shift. He had not fidgeted this whole time, but the uncomfortable atmosphere between us changed to utter stillness.

In the moment that I was smiling at him, I considered three things.

First, that when a Head of Family died, a formality was to go through his will. Then a mourning period, and a long list of appointments to be made. Regardless of my age, I still had to make those appointments. Thanks to my fostering, I knew how.

Secondly, my father had died absurdly young. He had no illnesses, beyond that of his own reckoning, he had enough magic to keep the family title in reserve, and it hadn't been a day since his death.

Thirdly, upon the death of a family head with a title held in reserve, the reading of the will shan't be held until long after the mourning period. Time had to be set aside so that the whole Family could attend.

Having a title in reserve complicated an endless amount of matters.

And my very being here?

It was unorthodox, unexpected, _unlawful_ and if they denied me any of my rights, they would be, to put it mildly, in a good bit of trouble.

But there was no need to antagonize the goblins. After all, this could be an opportunity to smooth out my future dealings with them as a lord.

That didn't mean that I wouldn't make a fuss however, and I was certainly owed more than just a fuss.

"As is my right, I shall exact a proper reading of the will of the late head of Pettigrew this instant," I commanded, and in response, the air before me burst into gold flames unfurling into the Family Crest, bright thin flames of wire in gleaming gold, blue and red.

This was the  _Phélypeaux_ crest.

I blinked my eyes. Slightly concerning, but within the realm of expectations and ultimately something that I could deal with.

Gildewing didn't protest. Denying me anything after I'd crossed the threshold of this room would be terribly unwise.

For a room where a contract could be signed without a third witness... well.

Gildewing pushed himself off the chair and disappeared out the door.

If all my relatives from a certain branch appeared, it was evidence of their . And they had to appear or they would risk missing the first reading, where any titles passed would happen here and now. You couldn't just go around claiming titles sfter all. There was a timing and tradition to a title as old as Phélypeaux.

Monetary and material possessions weren't as such. In normal instances they would have been alerted or aware beforehand. Therefore the whole branch would attend. They wouldn't be expecting something like this. Unless of course the goblins sent a little extra.

I smiled widely.

  
I'd met all my relatives at most once, and most fortunately, I'd been born with excellent memory when it came to Family. I didn't know if this was the family magic acting, but regardless. Every name, face and voice, that I'd seen or heard before, I would recognize.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit long-winded in the explanations, but necessary to understand the shit that will be going down in the future chapters.


End file.
